Month: February 2016

The MI-AIMH Board of Directors is very pleased to welcome Cathy Liesman, Ph.D., IMH-E (IV) as President and Rosalva Osorio, L.M.S.W., IMH-E (III), as Vice President of the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health Board.

Cathy is currently the Chief Operating Officer at Development Centers, Inc. (DCI) in Detroit and has had administrative responsibilities at DCI since its founding in 1983. She has a Ph.D. in Psychology and is endorsed at Level IV-Policy Mentor. Cathy has served on the MI-AIMH Board of Directors for 20 years as President, Social Action Committee Chair and Treasurer. She was the recipient of the Betty Tableman Award in 2001 for her advocacy work and has cherished her connections to her many MI-AIMH colleagues throughout her career.

Cathy describes advocating for relationship-based work, services for young children and MI-AIMH as her avocation. Her skills in relationship-based work extend from relationships with families to working within and across systems as she has supervised, secured grants, developed programs and successfully advocated for children and families. She helped to grow Development Centers, Inc. into the comprehensive agency that it is today serving over 11,000 persons and their families each year in mental health, vocational, Head Start and prevention programming.

She is very excited about serving as MI-AIMH’s president as she believes that MI-AIMH has a critical role in workforce development and support of the professionals in multiple disciplines who work with very young children and their families. She sees MI-AIMH as a “wonderful vehicle” for the collaborative work of cross-system advocacy for best practice and services for very young children and their families. Cathy is excited about the talent of current board members who bring a diversity of skill, talent and discipline. She explains that each person’s skills are needed to continue to move MI-AIMH forward with the refining of MI-AIMH within Michigan as well as the promotion of the national organization, the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health.  Cathy believes it is important for individuals to be ambassadors of MI-AIMH and relationship-based work. “It is the depth of who we reach as individuals that makes our work so far reaching.”

As the current president Cathy offers stability, knowledge of organizations and a commitment to continue to work for the growth accomplished by the staff and board.

Rosavla Osorio is a Clinical Director at The Children’s Center, one of two contracted providers of Detroit-Wayne Mental Health Authority dedicated solely to children’s services. Prior to her current position she was Program Supervisor for Infant Mental Health Services at Southwest Counseling Solutions, where she “fell in love with infant mental health.” Rosalva earned a Masters of Social Work at the University of Michigan and is endorsed at Level III, Infant Mental Health Specialist.

She greatly appreciates the reflective process in infant mental health as a way for clinicians to learn about themselves and be a “tuning fork” for families with very young children.  She describes a family she worked with for 3 years that helped her understand and value infant mental health. She recalls the joy the family experienced when their medically fragile young child learned to sit up and then walk. His mom, who initially felt defeated and inadequate, came to see herself as competent and important to her toddler. Rosalva wants to help other young children and their families find joy together.

Rosalva explains that she experienced “ghosts” from her family of origin and that the birth of her daughter, Isalia, now 12, was an opportunity to grow and change to become better.  She understood that being a young mother would be hard but wanted to be her best for Isalia. “She is my biggest piece of artwork, my biggest joy.” She has been intentional and reflective in her parenting and acknowledges that this is an important part of infant mental health work.  She is grateful to Jennifer DeSchryver, Psy.D., who served as consultant when Rosalva was at Southwest Counseling Solutions. She saw Rosalva’s talent and passion and recommended her for a board position.

Rosalva believes that each of us has talent to bring to the infant mental health field. “I get so passionate about being a change agent,” she stated, “so I speak up. People see things in me that I didn’t see in myself.”   She recalls being intimidated when she joined the board 3 years ago, yet finding it “humbling and an honor” to work with people she admired. She soon realized that “we are all human and all learning.”  She believes being a part of change is about creating relationships and hopes that other MI-AIMH members will step out of their comfort zone to advocate on behalf of infants, toddlers and their families. She is excited to continue to move MI-AIMH forward wanting it to be the first place that everyone goes to for information about infants, toddlers and their families. Rosalva will serve for one year as Vice President and then move into the MI-AIMH Presidency.

Mothers’ and fathers’ engagement and support for young children after they experience distress teaches young children valuable skills in coping with negative emotions (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998). This process is particularly critical in early childhood when these skills are emerging and in low-income, high stress populations (Raver, 2004).  Although dyadic (parent-child) regulation processes have been well studied, less is known about emotion socialization in the context of triads (mothers, fathers, and children) in this population. Among older children and their families, as well as among wealthier counterparts, research shows that characteristics such as family stress and parents’ psychopathology are related to how mothers and fathers support their children’s expression and management of negative emotions (Nelson, O’Brien, Blankson, Calkins, & Keane, 2009). In our work, we are investigating if triadic engagement (mother, father, and child) after stressful events is a context for family emotion socialization.  In short, we are interested in how joint interactions between family members serve as a context for children’s learning about emotions.  We expect that parents’ psychopathology and family stress will impact the quality of these family interactions.

Research Questions

In the current study, we explore the following research question: What factors in parental reports of their own mental health, as well as in their perceptions of their children and families’, predict their capacity to engage with their young children following a stressor? We are particularly interested in how parents provide emotional support to their young children after a stressful experience, especially when in the presence of another parent, and the ways in which “repairs” are made in interactions (such as when a disruption in the interaction occurs if a parent misinterprets a child’s cue).  Such supports and repairs are thought to promote children’s early emotional development, though this idea has not been investigated in the context of triads.

Overview of Study Methods

The current study describes data collected in a broader, ongoing study (Toddlers’ Emotional Development in Young Families; TEDY; PI: Bocknek) from urban families (89% African American) recruited from WIC centers. Two-year-old children (M=26.73 months), their biological mothers, and secondary caregivers (67% biological fathers) enrolled. Eighty-three percent of families reported annual incomes of $20,000 or less, and 16% were married. Both parents reported on child behavior, family functioning, and psychopathology. In addition, the families participated in a set of observed interaction tasks. The current study includes only those families in which the biological father participated (N=45) and describes data coded during a structured play task where mother-father-child triads reunited after a short separation and blew bubbles together for three minutes.

Behaviors were coded using a microsocial coding system that captured the occurrence of social bids and responses among children and parents [e.g., child vocalizing to parent and parent responding in a meaningful way; parent giving a direction and child promptly following the direction].  The duration of engagement among family members was also coded.  Specifically, the percent of time all three members of the triad were actively engaged (e.g., harmoniously interacting in a joint activity) with each other was assessed. Results suggested that families were relatively engaged most of the time (i.e., on average, families were engaged for 50.79% of the task). Indicators of engagement included reciprocal discussion, physical orientation toward each other, reciprocal activity involvement, and showing interest in what the other family members are doing (interrater reliability: k=.75). In addition, mothers as well as fathers self-reported on a set of questions pertaining to their own mental health, their perceptions of their children’s behavior, and their family dynamics. In the current study, we present data from parent reports of their own posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression symptoms, as well as their assessment of their child’s temperament, their co-parenting relationship, and chaos in the family/home environment.

Results

Exposure to Trauma

Mothers as well as fathers reported high rates of exposure to potentially traumatic psychosocial events (e.g., family and community violence). Mothers were more likely than fathers to report histories of sexual and non-sexual assault by family members or intimates while fathers were more likely to report non-sexual assault by strangers and imprisonment. Both mothers and fathers reported high rates of potentially traumatic loss (e.g., unexpected death of a relative). See Table 1 for rates of exposure to potentially traumatic events.

Predictors of the Quality of Triadic (Family) Engagement

Parental psychopathology and stress. Mothers’ (but not fathers’) severity of PTSD symptoms was negatively associated with triadic (family) engagement. However, fathers’ (but not mothers’) reports of the chaos in the family environment was negatively associated with triadic engagement. Interestingly, parental depression was not significantly associated with engagement.

Child behavior. Fathers’ (but not mothers’) reports of children’s inhibitory control (an early form of self-regulation related to temperament style) was associated with family engagement.

Discussion/ Conclusions

These results suggest that families may be less likely to be engaged with each other following stress when mothers have higher PTSD symptoms, or when fathers perceive child or family disorganization. The research literature describes mixed findings as to whether or not PTSD symptoms impact parenting, though depression is typically a more consistent predictor of low parenting quality (Muzik, Bocknek, Richardson, Rosenblum, Thelen, & Seng, 2015). However, in the current sample, maternal PTSD emerged as a significant predictor of family engagement while depression did not. Because we measured engagement following a stressful event, the likelihood of transient PTSD symptoms being triggered was heightened. Appleyard and Osofsky (2003) have argued that parental PTSD may be associated with less sensitive parenting when parents are preoccupied with, and struggling to regulate, their own reactions to the stressful event. Our findings point to the primary role that mothers may play in reorganizing their families after occurrence of stress. Furthermore, these findings emphasize that mothers’ psychopathology is a significant risk factor for the family.

Fathers’ perceptions of their children and their homes were also significant predictors of the degree to which families positively re-engaged after the stressor task. From a theoretical perspective, scholars highlight the critical role that perception plays in helping families adapt to stress, such that greater adaptation occurs when family members believe that coping is possible because internal and external environments are predictable (Lavee, McCubbin, & Patterson, 1985). These findings suggest that fathers may play an important role in helping families to positively perceive internal resources to adapt. Furthermore, fathers’ perceptions compared to mothers’ may be more impactful on triadic engagement as function of the higher variability of overall paternal engagement compared to maternal engagement in this population.

Key Implications for Practice 

This study underscores the need to intervene with mothers and fathers in different ways in multi-stressed families.

• Parents’ mental health requires significant support as means to support whole family adaptation, and posttraumatic stress disorder requires a special emphasis among populations in urban poverty for whom the risk for trauma is high.
• Parental perceptions about their children’s and families’ capacity for adaptation may significantly impact engagement after stress and therefore there is likely a significant link between parental perception of coping capacities and parenting behaviors.

References

Appleyard, K., & Osofsky, J. D. (2003). Parenting after trauma: Supporting parents and caregivers in the treatment of children impacted by violence. Infant Mental Health Journal, 24(2), 111-125.

Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9(4), 241-273.

Lavee, Y., McCubbin, H. I., & Olson, D. H. (1987). The effect of stressful life events and transitions on family functioning and well-being. Journal of Marriage and The Family, 49(4), 857-873.

Muzik, M., Bocknek, E. L., Richardson, P., Broderick, A., Rosenblum, K. L., Thelen, K., & Seng, J. S. (2013). Mother-infant bonding in the first six months postpartum: The primacy of psychopathology in women with child abuse and neglect histories. Archives of Women’s Mental Health, 16(1), 29-38.

Nelson, J. A., O’Brien, M., Blankson, A. N., Calkins, S. D., & Keane, S. P. (2009). Family stress and parental responses to children’s negative emotions: Tests of the spillover, crossover, and compensatory hypotheses. Journal of Family Psychology, 23(5), 671-679.

Raver, C. C. (2004). Placing Emotional Self-Regulation in Sociocultural and Socioeconomic Contexts. Child Development, 75(2), 346-353.

Contact Information

For more information about this study contact:  Erika London Bocknek, PhD, LMFT, IMH-IV; Erika.Bocknek@wayne.edu

Table 1

Rates of Trauma Exposure Reported by Mothers and Fathers

Trauma Type	Mothers	Fathers
Serious accident, fire, explosion	41.7%	47.2%
Natural disaster	26.7%	23.1%
Non-sexual assault by family member/someone you know	43.3%	30.8%
Non-sexual assault by stranger	26.7%	46.2%
Sexual assault by family member/someone you know	30.0%	13.5%
Sexual assault by stranger	11.7%	0%
Military combat or war zone	0.0%	3.8%
Sexual contact with someone 5 years or more older when you were younger than 18	30.0%	25.0%
Imprisonment	10.0%	26.9%
Torture	3.3%	5.8%
Loss of loved one in unexpected or traumatic way	61.7%	68.2%
Other (includes infant loss, parent loss, gunshot wound, violent relationship)	9.1%	10.3%

 

 

In this research brief we will present research that explores family factors predicting parents’ negative responses to toddlers’ emotions.  It is important to learn more about mothers’ and fathers’ negative response as we understand that these responses impact the way that children are socialized to understand and express emotion.  Parental emotion socialization practices are thought to be a function of parenting and family processes embedded in the family context¹.  We examined (1) parents’ beliefs about when and to what extent children should express emotions², (2) parents’ handling of their own emotions^1,3,4, and (3) the co-parenting relationship⁵— each of which reflect key processes in the family context that likely influence parents’ socialization practices, particularly how parents respond to toddlers’ expressions of emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness. As defined by Gottman², parental beliefs about emotion can include dismissing attitudes such that children’s expressions of strong emotions such as anger, sadness or fear are met with anger, sarcasm or shaming. Generally, these types of reactions to children’s emotions are thought to be detrimental to children’s emotional development while more supportive responses are considered more optimal.  Parents’ skills in regulating their own emotions, particularly in front of children, are also powerful emotion socialization agents.  Imagine a parent who models dysregulated anger, such as screaming in anger rather than modeling how to more constructively express anger.  Parents who have difficulties managing their own powerful feelings are more likely to respond to their children’s expressions of emotions in a negative fashion⁴.  Likewise, the co-parenting relationship can be characterized by hostility and anger that spills over into parenting behaviors^6,7.  Triangulation, for example, occurs when one parents pulls the child into parental conflict by forcing the child into an alliance against the other parent.  Examples of triangulation include things like one parent saying negative things about the other parent to the child and degrading the other parent.  Triangulation is very harmful for the child because it places the child  in the impossible circumstance of having to negotiate and deal with conflict between the parents⁸.  The ways that parents raise the child together is called the co-parenting relationship.  The co-parenting relationship is sometime characterized by very negative processes such as triangulation. 

Research Questions

We were interested in how these three socialization contexts– parents’ emotion dismissing beliefs, parents’ dysregulatory problems, and co-parenting—were independently and in interaction related to mothers’ and fathers’ responses to toddlers’ expressions of anger, fear and sadness.

Methods

Participants included 83 couples (Mage mothers = 31.96 years, SD = 4.62; Mage fathers = 33.88 years, SD = 5.25) with toddlers (Mage = 29.06 months, SD = 4.40), reflecting a primarily Caucasian, middle class sample. Mothers and fathers separately completed measures of co-parenting behaviors (Co-parenting Questionnaire⁹, triangulation subscale), difficulties in parents’ emotion regulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale¹⁰), parents’ emotion dismissing beliefs (Emotion-Related Parenting Styles Questionnaire¹¹), and parents’ self-reported responses to toddlers’ expressions of anger, sadness and fear represented  in a series of vignettes (Coping with Toddlers’ Negative Emotion Scale¹²).

Results

Parental age and income were not significantly related to the outcomes and were dropped from further analyses.  Child age and gender were not significantly related to parental responses to toddlers’ emotions but were retained for conceptual integrity. Both mothers’ and fathers’ own emotion regulation difficulty were not significantly related to parental responses to toddlers’ emotions.  We were surprised at this result.   Most parents, though, rated themselves as being very high in emotion regulation skills (and self-reports may not reflect what is actually happening or what the parents’ emotion regulation skills really are).  For fathers, perceptions of triangulation and emotion dismissing beliefs were related to their unsupportive responses to toddler emotions.  This model explained about 25% of the variances in fathers’ unsupportive reactions to toddlers’ anger, fear and sadness.  Similarly, for mothers, triangulation in the co-parenting relationship and emotion dismissing beliefs related to their unsupportive responses to toddlers’ emotion. However, for mothers only, the interaction between maternal perceptions of triangulation and paternal emotion dismissing beliefs was significantly related to mothers’ unsupportive responses, explaining about 30% of the variance in mothers’ negative responses to toddlers’ anger, sadness and fear. As illustrated in the figure below, when mothers reported a conflictual co-parenting relationship (characterized by triangulation) and when fathers had strong emotion dismissing beliefs, mothers responded more negatively to toddlers emotions.

Figure 1. Paternal emotion dismissing beliefs moderate relations between mothers’ perceived triangulation in the co-parenting relationship and their unsupportive responses to toddlers’ negative emotions. Mothers use more unsupportive responses when they perceive triangulation in the co-parenting relationship and when fathers’ have emotion dismissing beliefs.

Discussion

For both mothers and fathers, their own emotion dismissing beliefs and their perceptions of triangulation (such as the other parent was using their child as a pawn or ally in response to a conflictual parenting relationship) were related to unsupportive responses to toddlers’ emotions.  Collectively, this suggests that multiple dimensions of the emotional climate in the home are related to parents’ early emotion socialization behaviors. In our study, negative climate in the home clearly related to parents’ harsh responses to toddlers’ strong emotions. Interestingly, mothers were influenced by fathers’ dismissing beliefs in interaction with their perceptions of triangulation in the co-parenting relationship.  This is somewhat surprising because some of our prior work suggests that fathers tend to be more heavily impacted by mothers’ behaviors than mothers are by fathers¹³.  It may be that in the earliest years of parenting mothers are particularly sensitive to the dynamics in the parenting relationship.  Towards the end of toddlerhood, parenting tends to fall into relatively stable patterns.  Prior to that point, however, parenting behaviors may be more vulnerable to the evolving dynamics as a couple transitions to parenthood. In summary, results underscore the strong influence of the co-parenting relationship and beliefs about emotions for both mothers and fathers, but also highlight the ways in which complex interactions differentially influence the socialization practices of mothers and fathers.  Home visitors can play an important role in educating parents about findings like this and helping parents navigate the early family environment.¹⁴

Key Points:

• Emotion socialization in the home reflects multiple contexts including parents’ own beliefs and behaviors, and the emotional climate of the co-parenting relationships.

• Supporting parents in exploring their own beliefs about emotions and the expression of emotions may play a key role in helping parents develop supportive responses to toddlers’ strong emotions.

• Home visitors can support positive emotion socialization by promoting emotional strengths in the parenting and the co-parenting relationship. Supporting parenting partners in developing positive tools to manage the co-parenting relationship has benefits for toddlers’ early emotional development.

 

References

1. Morris AS, Silk JS, Steinberg L, Myers SS, Robinson LR. The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation. Social development. 2007;16(2):361-388.
2. Gottman JM, Katz LF, Hooven C. Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology. 1996;10(3):243.
3. Martini TS, Root CA, Jenkins JM. Low and middle income mothers’ regulation of negative emotion: Effects of children’s temperament and situational emotional responses. Social Development. 2004;13(4):515-530.
4. Carrère S, Bowie BH. Like parent, like child: Parent and child emotion dysregulation. Archives of psychiatric nursing. 2012;26(3):e23-e30.
5. Pape Cowan C, Cowan PA. Two central roles for couple relationships: Breaking negative intergenerational patterns and enhancing children’s adaptation. Sexual and Relationship Therapy. 2005;20(3):275-288.
6. Stroud CB, Durbin CE, Wilson S, Mendelsohn KA. Spillover to triadic and dyadic systems in families with young children. Journal of Family Psychology. 2011;25(6):919.
7. Margolin G, Gordis EB, John RS. Coparenting: a link between marital conflict and parenting in two-parent families. Journal of Family Psychology. 2001;15(1):3.
8. Feinberg ME. The internal structure and ecological context of coparenting: A framework for research and intervention. Parenting: Science and Practice. 2003;3(2):95-131.
9. Margolin G. Coparenting Questionnaire. Unpublished instrument, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 1992.
10. Gratz KL, Roemer L. Multidimensional assessment of emotion regulation and dysregulation: Development, factor structure, and initial validation of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. 2004;26(1):41-54.
11. Paterson AD, Babb KA, Camodeca A, et al. Emotion-Related Parenting Styles (ERPS): A short form for measuring parental meta-emotion philosophy. Early Education & Development. 2012;23(4):583-602.
12. Spinrad T, Eisenberg N, Kupfer A, Gaertner B, Michalik N. The coping with negative emotions scale. Paper presented at: International Conference for Infant Studies2004.
13. Cho S, Brophy-Herb, H., & Vallotton, C. Actor and partner effects in the relationship between maternal and paternal parenting behaviors in toddlerhoodunder review.
14. Kolak AM, Volling BL. Parental Expressiveness as a Moderator of Coparenting and Marital Relationship Quality*. Family Relations. 2007;56(5):467-478.